Are Uber and Lyft responsible for the decline in drinking & driving in West Hollywood?

In a recent report, we explored the drop in drinking & driving in West Hollywood. We assumed that the decline was largely due to transportation network companies (TNCs) such as Uber and Lyft. Then we started to wonder if the numbers back up that assumption. In this report, we lay out three reasons to believe in an Uber effect on drinking & driving and two issues that leave us uncertain.

Reason #1: What users say

Avoiding drinking & driving is the number one reason users give for picking TNCs over their own cars. Researchers from the University of California, Davis surveyed users in Los Angeles and six other major cities. One-third put drinking & driving at the top, ahead of parking or any other reason.

REASONS FOR USING RIDE-HAILING SERVICES INSTEAD OF DRIVING ONESELF

Note: This chart comes from the report and has been cropped. Source: UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies, “Disruptive Transportation: The Adoption, Utilization, and Impacts of Ride-Hailing in the United States,” October 2017.

Reason #2: West Hollywood numbers

Uber’s mass-market service, UberX, arrived in 2013. Drinking & driving has declined in West Hollywood in every year since then. We’re measuring drinking & driving in terms of arrests for driving under the influence (DUI) and alcohol-involved collisions in which DUI was the primary collision factor.

We compared the average numbers for the four years before 2013 to the four years after 2013. The numbers were twice as high before UberX came to town.

Notes: (1) By alcohol collisions, we mean collisions that involved alcohol and in which the primary collision factor was driving under the influence. (2) The taxi driver number is the number of taxi driver licenses issued by the City in a given year. (3) Taxi drivers licensed in West Hollywood may be licensed and working in other cities as well. (4) The UberX launch date comes from one of the academic papers discussed below. Sources: California Department of Justice; City of West Hollywood; California Highway Patrol; our analysis.

Of course, we wouldn’t expect the change to happen all at once. We’d expect drinking & driving to decline over time as TNC ridership grew. We can’t prove that directly, because Uber and Lyft don’t release ridership data. But we have a proxy: the number of taxi drivers, which goes down as TNC ridership goes up. The proxy is 90% correlated with drinking & driving. It suggests that drinking & driving is highly (negatively) correlated with TNC ridership in West Hollywood.

Reason #3: Academic studies

We looked for academic research to corroborate what the West Hollywood numbers seem to show. We found six recent studies that examined the statistical relationship between Uber and drinking & driving. Several of them support the Uber effect in their top-line conclusions:

“We find a significant drop in the rate of fatalities after the introduction of Uber X” — Brad Greenwood, Temple

Issue #1: Correlation is not causation

The West Hollywood numbers show that drinking & driving shrank as TNCs grew. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that one caused the other. Correlation is not causation. Many other factors — such as enforcement efforts — could be partly or totally responsible.

We noticed two facts that argue against TNCs as the (only) cause of the recent drop in drinking & driving:

The drop started the year before UberX arrived

A similar decline happened 10 years earlier, long before Uber existed

The chart below superimposes the earlier decline on top of the recent drop. They look a lot alike. It leaves us uncertain whether TNCs were really responsible for the recent fall.

Sources: Same as above.

Issue #2: Mixed academic evidence

That uncertainty makes the academic studies more important. However, after a closer look, we think the statistical evidence is surprisingly mixed.

We give more weight to three of the studies, because they were published in peer-reviewed journals. (“Peer-reviewed” means that the quality of the papers was checked by other experts who weren’t involved in the research.) The three studies came to conflicting conclusions about the Uber effect:

No: The USC study found no evidence of an Uber effect on alcohol-related traffic fatalities or total traffic fatalities in the top 100 metropolitan areas

Yes and no: The University of Pennsylvania study detected large drops in alcohol-related collisions in two cities (Portland and San Antonio), but none in a third city (Reno)

Yes and no: The Temple University study found a small (4% to 6%) reduction in alcohol-related traffic fatalities in California due to Uber, but not on weekends and not in smaller cities like West Hollywood

The three remaining studies concluded the effect is real. We’re more cautious. We view some their detailed statistical results as more mixed or limited.

Note: One example of our more cautious view: we think results showing a significant effect in the years after Uber arrives are less convincing when they also show Uber having a significant beneficial effect in the years before it arrives. Sources: Academic studies (listed below); our analysis.

In the studies that found an Uber effect, the estimated size varied dramatically. The smallest estimate was 4% of drunk-driving fatalities. The biggest were 62% of alcohol-involved crashes and 40% of all traffic fatalities. Some found the effect was immediate, others determined it built up over years.

Overall, we think the evidence is too mixed to prove that TNCs are responsible for the decline in drinking & driving in West Hollywood.

List of academic studies

These are the academic studies we reviewed:

Noli Brazil (was USC, now UC Davis) and David S. Kirk (Oxford), “Uber and Metropolitan Traffic Fatalities in the United States,” American Jounal of Epidemiology, 2016

Christopher Morrison et al (Penn), “Ridesharing and Motor Vehicle Crashes in 4 U.S. Cities: An Interrupted Time-Series,” American Journal of Epidemiology, 2017 (based on press reports in The Verge and other online sources)

Short answer: Maybe, but the evidence is surprisingly mixed|
In a recent report, we explored the drop in drinking & driving in West Hollywood. We assumed that the decline was largely due to transportation network companies (TNCs) such as Uber and Lyft. Then we started to wonder if the...

DavidWarrendavid_warren@post.harvard.eduAdministratorWeHo by the Numbers

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reports using data to explore city government policy, performance, and community issues. Focused on West Hollywood (WeHo), Beverly Hills, Culver City, Los Angeles, and Santa Monica. Researched and written by David Warren as a private citizen. This is not a government website.